"Ciao bella"

Today started off slow. We went to a few churches this morning and walked around. The first was a church where Constantine was supposedly baptized, according to legend. Another was the Saint John Lateran, which was the pope's home church before Saint Peter's. It's huge, and was built after the second sack of Rome. There was mass going on when we entered, and the choir's singing just echoed off the walls forever. It was so beautiful, I could have stayed there all day. It was really amazing to think about how common belief has united thousands of people in that building for hundreds of years. The third one all of us went to had three layers of churches underneath it, but we couldn't take pictures inside the church at all, which was disappointing. It was my favorite one of the day. The layers of churches underneath were a lot like the catacombs; very humid and cool. We got to see the old early Christian church one layer down, and then underneath that was the Roman house-church where Christians used to meet back in the day. It was so interesting. There were beautiful frescoes over the ceiling here, too.
After we were done for the day, a few of us went with Dr. Kresser to another church that was the first to be put on the Roman Forum. It was very small, and kind of hot, but it looked over into the temple of Romulus in the Forum through a window.
First quiz tonight. I think we all did pretty well, but it was weird taking care of "school stuff" while we're in Rome. These days are flying by. In a couple more days we'll have been here for two weeks. What? Really?
Had my first Calzone here tonight! We ate at a restaurant on the Campo de Fiori. We had a couple street performers come up and ask for money (actually, that's a really normal thing around here. We see beggars on church steps all the time, and street musicians and vendors are pretty agressive. I feel bad saying no, since Italy's unemployment rate is so hideous, but you know. Can't give money to everybody. Plus, I hardly ever carry change.) Anyway. The calzone, it was really good, but Roman prosciutto is very salty. I'm so baffled how little water they drink here, and yet all of their food has so much salt in it. Their insides must be well-preserved, by now. Hm. Went to the store for lunch today, and people started speaking Italian to me. It's funny how you instantly lose tourist status when you explore by yourself or with just one other person (well, so long as you're not wearing sandals with socks and a big floppy hat and a camera strung around your neck). I found peanut butter! Bottom shelf, behind the Nutella. I had peanut butter sandwiches and yogurt for lunch. Beautiful. Tonight we went back to this really amazing gelato place we found by the Pantheon: 3 flavors for 2.20 Euro. Pretty amazing. Coffee, tiramisu, and chocolate together is the stuff of legend. We hung out at the Piazza Nuvona for a while, and this old man came up to us and started to sing to us. It was pretty hilarious. He talked with us for a while, practiced his English. He had a really hard time saying "month" and "Mexico," which was slightly amusing. Then he told us all about how much he loved his mother and when he looked up at the stars, he thought of her. Or something. He liked his mom a lot, I'll just paraphrase. He was trying to be such a charmer, and talked our ears off. We finally managed to leave, but he still had to say "Ciao bella" to me and give me a traditional Italian goodbye. It was funny.
Some pictures from today (they're backwards from the order we went there):

Looking down into the temple of Romulus from a window in the Cosmos and Damien church.

The inside of the church of Cosmos and Damien, built in the Roman Forum.

The San Clemente courtyard.

Outside of San Clemente--where the layers of churches were.

The dome of one of the chapels in Saint John Lateran.

We visited the church during Mass. We were still able to look at the church when we walked through the ambulatory, which is how I got this really quick, blurry picture.

The ceiling of Saint John Lateran, the church Constantine built as the pope's home church. It was the pope's home church for quite a while. It's called Lateran because the church was built on property confiscated from a treasonous family with the name Laterus (sp?).

Outside the pope's old palace. This was an apse (rounded end of a room) that would have been part of the old triclinium (dining room). This mosaic shows Jesus blessing the pope and Constantine and Peter blessing another pope and Charlemagne. Intense church-state statements, here.

The dome of the small church where Constantine was supposedly baptized.

The tub thing where, according to legend, Constantine was baptized.